12/03/2001 @ 11:09AM

Ginger's Not So Spicy

Those credulous investors who anointed inventor
Dean
Kamen
Dean Kamen
the next savior of the technology sector must be feeling a little foolish today. Kamen was expected to revolutionize transportation with his top-secret invention, code-named “Ginger,” which now turns out to be a battery-powered scooter. It can handle a variety of terrains, but it does not float, proving that Kamen does not after all walk on water.

To be fair, not even Thomas Alva Edison could have lived up to the hype that has surrounded Kamen’s latest project. He calls it the Segway Human Transporter, and he says it can go wherever a person can walk. That’s great, but it’s still a scooter.

Kamen has quite a track record–among other things, he invented a portable kidney-dialysis machine, a wheelchair that can handle stairs and a heart stent used by Vice President
Dick\
Cheney
Dick Cheney
. The new Segway has two wheels, a battery and a gyroscope that helps keep it upright and heading in the right direction at speeds of up to 17 miles per hour. Kamen bills the device as “an enhancement to personal mobility that will allow people to make better use of their time,” and that eventually “can make urban environments more livable by providing a solution to short-distance travel.”

Among the organizations expected to test the commercial version of Segway are the U.S. Postal Service, the National Park Service and
Amazon.com
. A consumer version will not be available until late next year. Reportedly, it will cost $3,000.

Quite possibly, Kamen’s new device will be a success in commercial applications–it’s easy to imagine Amazon’s employees using it to scoot around their cavernous warehouses, for instance. But the hype surrounding Segway has focused on its potential ability to transform the world à la the Internet, which means it must have mass appeal for consumers. Kamen bills it as a breakthrough comparable in some ways to the invention of the automobile or the airplane. He sees people in urban areas using Segways instead of cars for shorter trips. That seems unlikely, to say the least.

It is certainly true that Americans need to be weaned from their dependence upon cheap foreign oil, since it’s not likely to remain cheap forever. In that regard, the bigger news today was the announcement by
Ballard Power Systems
that it signed a $43.9 million deal to supply
Ford Motor
with fuel-cell engines. “This new order is further confirmation of Ford’s commitment to Ballard and to the commercialization of fuel-cell vehicles,” Ballard Chairman
Firoz
Rasul
Firoz Rasul
said in a statement.

Unlike Kamen, Rasul was not invited on Good Morning America today to proclaim his glad tidings to a waiting world. But products such as Rasul’s probably have more revolutionary potential than Kamen’s Segway. Even in crowded cities, people are not about to abandon their cars for high-priced scooters. When Kamen comes up with a scooter than can fly, then he’ll have something.